medieval worlds • no. 6 • 2017Religious Exemption in Pre-Modern Eurasia, C. 300-1300 CE
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Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Austrian Academy of Sciences Press
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DATUM, UNTERSCHRIFT / DATE, SIGNATURE
BANK AUSTRIA CREDITANSTALT, WIEN (IBAN AT04 1100 0006 2280 0100, BIC BKAUATWW), DEUTSCHE BANK MÜNCHEN (IBAN DE16 7007 0024 0238 8270 00, BIC DEUTDEDBMUC)
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medieval worlds • no. 6 • 2017, pp. 7-19, 2017/12/01
Religious Exemption in Pre-Modern Eurasia, C. 300-1300 CE
The exemption of people and institutions recognised as religious from public obligations, including taxation and military and labour services, appears to have been universal in the complex societies of Eurasia at least from the end of antiquity until the end of the ancien régime – that is, in some cases, until the present. However, the systematisation between the tenth and thirteenth centuries CE of the nature and uses of such exemption was everywhere central to the great transformation of that epoch, essential to the emergence or construction of the ancien régime in Europe as in South India, China and Japan. Religious exemption was sometimes promoted and sometimes attacked by rulers, but it is best understood neither as supporting nor as undermining ›the state‹, but as providing a long-term balancing mechanism between centralising powers and local elites; the waqf may be seen as performing a similar function in Islamic societies.
Keywords: Eurasia; exemption; immunity; taxation; jurisdiction; monasteries; temples; waqf; kings; emperors; nobles; holy man; antiquity; ancien régime; transformation; modernisation; feudalism